The Watcher - Līxar

Taken from The Musings of a Wanderer by Bevel Dart

A lifetime of rumors, legends, and stories across my innumerable quests have periodically rung with a compelling chord. It is my great honor to have pieced together an understanding of and actually met the creature that I have come to call the Watcher. And confound it but it was a treat.

The lore of many peoples have spoken of creatures great and small that came to the townships of their ancestors, caused great destruction, and then vanished. We all know the stories that keep our children from wandering too far afield.

What academics across the continent largely miss is that these creatures are actually just a single beast: the Watcher.

The Watcher’s History

The Watcher is old. It is blessed, or cursed, with two great gifts: seeming agelessness and farsight. It has also been blessed, and cursed, with an ageless, enduring love for the only other creature of its kind.

Why cursed in love, you ask? Well I shall tell you, if you please! The Watcher and its mate spent ages together - the kind of love we can barely glimpse during the passions of our brief lives. And there came a time when the mate was hurt. Badly. From there, there are two possibilities. What we do know is the mate yet lives and is lost beneath the waves to the southwest of our great continent. We know this because of a multitude of stories, and because, following a hunch, I discovered the Watcher sitting atop one of the great mountains between Nashriam and The Thundering Sands Sands, staring off into the southern sea. But I’m getting ahead of myself. There are two possibilities:

1. The mate was hurt by whatever causes the blight of the Blighted Lands Lands, fell below the waves, and remains injured there, unable to heal.
2. The mate’s injury CAUSED the blight of the Blighted Lands. It fell below the waves, and it’s unhealing injuries continue to cause the sapping of congruence within the Blighted Lands.

No matter the cause, there it lies, unable to heal, and unreachable by its life partner.

We can barely fathom the grief felt by the dear Watcher. It has tried more possible solutions to find and save its mate than we could ever list in a lifetime. Unable to find a way to save its mate, the Watcher watches. Using its gift of farsight, it studies the lands and peoples of our continent, and perhaps beyond. It watches the flows of congruence about our world for any inkling of a solution.

The Watcher’s Power

This ageless study of congruence gives the Watcher its intense greatness. Countless lifetimes of studying congruence has given the creature immense power, perhaps the greatest of which is the ability to shapeshift. And there, my friends, is why the creatures of our legends appear to be different creatures but is, in fact, one. It watches the land, and if it finds a hint of a way to save its mate, it flies there in one of its many forms. And nothing will stop it once it is bent upon its purpose.

Meeting The Watcher

Now, I must remark upon the discovery I mentioned. On a hunch and through a lifetime of wandering, I found the Watcher. We had a fine to-do. It lay sprawled upon a high clifftop, its head sitting atop a boulder, staring out to sea. It wasn’t much for conversation. You see, any moment it spends away from its search is a possibility of losing the clue that will save its mate.

Though impatient and indifferently-hostile, I was able to confirm most of what I have shared above, but as soon as talk turned to the tragedy of its mate, I lost it. But I was able to confirm one great and heartening detail: the two remain connected. They share a real bond of mutual presence. I believe it is this connection that has kept the two sane. I don’t know if it is an energy beyond congruence, or if the Watcher maintains a flow of congruence to its mate, but I do know it’s there.

It is my sincerest hope that the two find one another again. They represent the unparalleled beauty and fellowship we are all capable of. From time-to-time, if I ever come across some idea, concept, or mechanism that could help the Watcher and its mate, I jot it down upon a slate, take it to my rooftop, and hang it there pointing to that faraway creature in hopes that, with its far-sight, it will see and possibly use the idea in the great puzzle of its lost love.